Florence Diary

I’m three weeks into Florence, this is the first where the balance tips: more days off than on. Today, I sit in the atrium of the apartment, just me and the tolling of the bells from looming Santo Spirito. Aside from my stroll to the shop this morning, I gave myself permission: sleep late, line up episodes, let the world wait.

When my alarm sounded at 9 a.m., my body felt heavy, as though gravity had decided to take permanent residence in my bones. I stayed. I hit snooze. I shoved out of mind the small voices urging me to rise and make something of my day.

Since summer began, I’ve moved at breakneck pace — exhausting the edges of myself. Between my day‑job, modelling stints, and chasing my partner to classrooms in Paris or London, I’ve lived in perpetual motion. There were times I’d clock out from work, change, then sprint to the airport, spend the weekend in a hotel bed — repeat. With September’s turn, he returned to Missouri (where he spends half the year). And yet, when your life is so full, absence can slip by unnoticed.

This morning, I woke up grateful not to be boxed in by others prodding and poking at my face with calipers, but the emptiness of my bed is sharp. The real sting of slipping into co‑dependency: you forget how to enjoy your own presence. There is no one here to walk in and hand me coffee with a pastry. Worse still was his insistence that I should “go out, date.” Only a couple weeks after saying the words for the first time to each other, something about the opportunity doesn't feel all that exciting. I love to date and I love to fuck, but oh how I had gotten myself wrapped up in the hotel sheets, a false world detached quite far from reality.

This past weekend I agreed to a date with a colleague, a kind, passionate and talented man . But when it came down to lips touching lips at the end of the night, it felt hollow and un-needed. I insisted on returning to my apartment alone. This afternoon his text arrived: “Dinner after I'm wrapped up teaching?” Guilt flared. “Do it, live life,” the voices in the back of my head say. But I’d rather hermit—cook something slow, linger over it, maybe resubscribe to Four Chambers and sink into some pretentious arthouse porn. Tuck into the tub of gelato I bought days ago that has not yet been touched.

Florence is romantic—when the scent of sewage dissipates. The food is a warm hug, the people embrace you likewise, streets cobble tales, art around every turn. You feel the influence of the bygone Medici everywhere - benefactors of the Renaissance we know. It’s a different kind of artistic hub to Bristol, more ancient, more weightful, less grime. The best sculptors and painters work here, many want to even with me. I got here on my own somehow, my partner put in no words for me - though I can attribute our work together as giving me an international platform. Maybe I am a bit of a nepo-baby, perhaps even a hypocrite.

Bitterness twists deep in my gut. So many artists are men, and frankly the horniest of men. I find myself having to face up to the fact that there is a reason so many want to work with me and perhaps I too am putting feminism back by agreeing. Recently, I photographed for a Catalan artist I had assumed was a woman (due to correspondence with people he’d drawn). The moment we got out on location I realised that there were ulterior motives to his request to feature in his book, asking incessantly that I come home with him and giving me the silent treatment whenever I said no. Worse still his model care was nil, I found myself stood in bushes and attacked by various creatures whilst he incessantly attempted to get the "right shot". Even in one of my latest workshops, a mostly great experience, I still walked away to a “would you like to get drinks” text. I wonder, every time I cave, whether I make the industry worse for the women who’ll come after me. Possibly.

This job is endless motion, thrilling possibility — and constant friction with predatory desire. It's a double edged sword that leaves me looking up at the sky in the middle of my atrium thinking how lucky I am, for my life to have transformed so quickly into something so beautiful. But still, I roll the dice every time, unsure if the next project will bring connection or harassment.

Then I think about the romance to come, because romance is within me. My days walking alone by the river. Lectures at Charles Cecil Academy. Nights in this apartment, hosting salons for new friends. The knot in my stomach loosens. The sky remains blue and there is peace in my life.

The same peace I feel when my youngest sibling hugs me. When I jump into clear blue water. Or when my lover and I hunker down beneath hotel bed sheets with a film.

Perhaps things are not so bad after all.